The success of Gmail is simply indisputable. Google’s email service, which turned 20 years old last May, was an instant success for several reasons. The first, of course, was the enormous storage capacity it offered compared to the services it was competing with at the time. And those were the days when the normal range was between 10 and a maximum of 100 megabytes, and here came Google, offering nothing less than one gigabyte free per account.

Another reason is the unsurpassed image that Google had at the time. Those were the days of the famous and remembered “Don’t be evil”, when his list of products and services could practically be written on the fingers of both hands, and it was still far from the volume that he reached over time.

And of course there was a third factor, which I’ve mentioned on other occasions, that helped Gmail generate much more interest. I am of course talking about You could only get an account by invitationand in the early days they were very, very rare, to the point where auctions became popular on services like Ebay, where some bids reached over $100. In my case, it’s absolutely clear to me that I wouldn’t have spent that much money, and I was lucky and got an invitation pretty quickly. But if I had to wait longer and we were talking about 10-20 euros, I don’t rule out that I would end up checking out.

With such a successful launch and so many people wanting to get their own account, you can imagine what happened when invitations stopped being necessary (unless you’ve experienced it, in which case you know firsthand), everyone started creating accounts on the service. Almost overnight, half the world shared their new email addressfrom Gmail of course. And while it’s true that both Hotmail and Yahoo! Correo quickly tried to accommodate Google’s proposal, and since both services continue to have a significant market share, the search engine service has been able to become a reference for many users.

Since then, the evolution of the service has also been more than remarkable. Its storage capacity grew and grew to the current 15 gigabytes (obviously shared with the rest of the company’s services), adding new features, adapting to the boom in new types of devices… in short, the list is very extensive, and given the importance of Gmail in Google’s strategy in general (although a few months ago the hoax spread that it would closed), we can expect this to be the case in the future as well.

Now, although the service has a disproportionate number of users, the truth is that many of them are “satisfied” with using basic functions services, that is, they do not know others that are most practical and therefore can be very useful to them. The three that we will see below are not secret, nor do they require the installation of a browser extension or anything like that, they are in the configuration options, and when we talk about them, I will tell you what you need to do to be able to use them. Ready? Well, let’s go there. However, keep in mind that I will be focusing on the web version of the service.

Cancel shipment

For me and by far this is the most practical feature of Gmail, one of the lesser known. How many times have you accidentally sent an email before completing it? We’ve all hit that rock, and while the world isn’t ending, it’s uncomfortable to see yourself in that situation, especially under certain circumstances. Google knows this and has developed a reverse shipment feature to avoid this.

To activate it, go to settings (you can get to it from this link) -> General, find the section “Unsubmit” and select the time you want to have margin from the list. It can be 5, 10, 20 or 30 seconds. Then go to the bottom of the configuration and click the “Save Changes” button. This way, from now on, whenever you send an email, after you do so, a message will appear at the bottom right of the page that allows you to reverse the send.

Schedule messages

Sometimes it’s not enough to write the right email, you also have to send it at a specific time, although it can be complicated if we can’t be in front of the PC at that time to send. Many people don’t know that Gmail allows you to schedule a message to be sent, and that’s the easiest thing in the world.

Of course, start by creating your message, and when you’re done, click the arrow to the right of the “Send” button and click “Schedule Send.” This will bring up a section where you can choose any of the three options shown, or if they don’t match what you want, click on “Select Date and Time” and use the selector that appears to select when the shipment should be made.

Snooze messages

I’m sure you’ve also received an email that you need to respond to, but you can’t do it at the moment, and of course you don’t want to risk forgetting to respond to it later. Fortunately, Gmail can help you with this as well, as it allows you to temporarily discard a message and be reminded of it when you flag it.

Its operation could not be easier. Simply hover over the relevant message in your inbox and four icons will appear on the right. Click on the clock-shaped one and it will bring up a dialog similar to the one for scheduling shipments, where you choose a date and time to remind you of the service.